Elemental Dawn (Paranormal Public) (4 page)

I was glad to see Sip, and the
Quests were probably the nicest set of parents I had ever met, but I couldn’t
shake the feeling that there was something terribly wrong.

“How is Public okay with all of
its students going to this coronation?” Sip asked.

“Will everyone be there?” I
wanted to know. The thought of the trip was both good and bad. I missed Lough
and Keller, but I had no desire to see the likes of Camilla Van Rothson or
Daisy Validification.

“This is a massive event,”
Lisabelle explained. “There are only three vampire kings and one of them is now
dead, but not just dead, murdered. There’s no way students will miss this.
Every paranormal who can possibly be there, will be.”

“I certainly hope not,” I said,
thinking of Malle.

My friends, knowing what was on
my mind, nodded. “She won’t be there. She can’t. She’s an outlaw. I am sure the
senior paranormals would kill her on sight.”

“Can they, though?” I asked in a
quiet voice. Malle was a powerful darkness mage. You don’t ascend to the very
pinnacle of power, either as the President of Public or as the leader in
command of all of darkness’s demons, without being strong.

“Maybe that’s their plan,”
Lisabelle mused. “To attack during the coronation when they will have all the
paranormals in one place. Even Charlotte will be out in the open.”

I glanced sharply at my friend. Sometimes
I forgot how important I was to the protection of paranormals, but I couldn’t
forget for long. “Thanks for reminding me,” I said dryly.

Lisabelle smirked. “Any time.”

“But Charlotte’s being there
should make it less likely that they’ll attack,” Sip chimed in. “Not more.”

“Why?” I narrowed my eyes.

“Well,” said Sip, getting up and
starting to pace, “because with you there the Power of Five can be enacted.”

“So, maybe they just try to take
out Charlotte before that happens,” said Lisabelle, her face clouding.

I threw up my hands. “Nothing is
going to happen,” I informed them. “If the Committee was worried about
something happening, surely they wouldn’t let me go. Or Professor Dacer would
have contacted me by now and told me to stay where I was.”

“Have you had any contact with
him over break?” Sip asked.

“No,” I said, swirling my tea
around. Until just that moment I hadn’t thought anything of it. Now I wondered
if I should contact him before heading to Vampire Locke.

“Charlotte,” Lisabelle broke in
suddenly. “Don’t feel bad about paranormals wanting you dead. Loads of them
want me dead, and I don’t feel bad about it at all.”

“So comforting,” I muttered.

“You’re welcome,” Lisabelle said.

“And you don’t understand,” said
Lisabelle. “No one could keep you away from this. Every paranormal will be
there.”

“Not every one,” I said, thinking
of Ricky. It was true that as far as I knew no powers had manifested themselves
yet in that quarter, but if our mom had been Airlee, it was only a matter of
time.

“Besides,” said Lisabelle, “this
might be fun. Nothing like a little death and mayhem to start off another
semester at Public.”

“You say that like it’s a good
thing,” Sip grumbled.

Lisabelle grinned.

“But we have so much to do,” I
said. “There are artifacts to find and my mom’s death to solve.”

Lisabelle shook her head. “What
makes you think you’re ever going to solve either of those mysteries?
Especially not with Uncle Risper working on the artifacts angle.”

I got up to pace. It had been a
year and a half since I found out that my mother was Airlee and my father
unknown (well, he had always been unknown to me, but now it seemed pretty clear
that he was an unknown elemental, one of the last), and I had made no headway
in finding out what had happened to her.

Okay, yes, I had been a little
busy, what with learning magic and not getting killed, not to mention all the
normal stressors of college life, like friends and a boyfriend I constantly
wondered if I deserved. But I was tired of putting off finding out what had happened
to my mom. My friends needed to understand that.

“Look,” I said calmly. “I know
there’s a lot happening, but my mother deserves justice, and Ricky deserves to
know what happened. He doesn’t know anything right now, and that is just not
fair. It would be nice to be able to tell him how she died when he finds out
that he has powers. Also, I’m more competent now. I’ve spent the last year and
a half practicing, so it should be easier for me to do the research I need to
do to find out what happened to her.”

“Look,” said Lisabelle, about as
gently as she ever said anything. “I know you’re upset and you still want to
know what happened to your mom, but none of those problems are immediate.”

I stared at her, trying not to
let the hurt and anger show in my face.

“You have no idea what I’ve been
through,” I said angrily, starting to pace again.

Stopping back in front of her, I
put my hands on my hips and glared. “I’ve done everything I was supposed to do
over the last year and a half. I don’t owe anyone anything. My life is
constantly in danger. For all I know the demons have some master plan to kill
me at this ceremony and I won’t even make it to Public again.”

“Way to be morbid,” said Sip,
looking at me sadly.

I jutted my chin out. “It’s true.
I’m in danger, and let’s be honest, everyone around me is in more danger just
for knowing me. You think that’s easy to live with?”

I was nearly yelling now, and I
could feel hot, angry tears streaming down my face. I was surprised by my own
emotion. I tried to take a couple of deep, calming breaths, but I could still
feel the despair welling up inside me.

“I have to know what happened to
them,” I whispered, looking back and forth between my friends. Sip just looked
heartbroken, her bright purple eyes downcast as she fidgeted. Lisabelle looked
thoughtful, but there was no pity in her black eyes. Probably for the best. If
she looked like she pitied me I was not sure I could take it.

“Forget it,” I yelled, and
slammed out the door. I was all alone.

I didn’t know where to go after
that outburst. I was too filled with emotion to stay confined in the house, so
I just grabbed my coat and walked outside.

I walked and walked. I don’t know
how far or for how long, except that when I was finished I was very tired and
hungry. I couldn’t stop moving, because if I did the cold air would bite
through my clothes to my skin.

I felt a little bad for leaving
my friends, but at least the majority of my anger had dissipated by the time I
was ready to go back. It was clear by then that holding in such strong feelings
had contributed to my short temper more than once over the past couple of
semesters. I would have to be careful of that, because as Lisabelle had pointed
out, it wasn’t like I was going to find relief anytime soon.

Feeling more defeated than ever,
I trudged back to the house.

It was now fully dark, with only
the moon to light my path. I thought about using my ring but decided against
it. I knew exactly where I was, and I could see the lights from the windows
beaming out at me in the distance.

I didn’t understand how totally
alone I was until I listened to my own footsteps. They echoed around me,
through the field and into the woods. At first I just tried to walk more
softly, not wanting to disturb the peace and quiet of the night, but then I
realized that I shouldn’t be able to hear my footsteps, because there should
have been other noises in the field I was crossing: the rustling of wind
through grass and bush, the patter of feet scurrying to get away from the
approaching paranormal, the pulse of night.

There was nothing.

Silence was my greeting and my
companion.

I increased my pace, now anxious
to get home. Walking faster only made me louder, though, and as I tried again
to quiet my steps I looked from side to side.

There! A movement in the
blackness. My breath quickened and I rushed forward. Maybe it was a deer or
some other animal. Or maybe not.

Sip had assured me that we were
in a safe place and that if there was any danger from demons or hellhounds we
would be alerted before we were at risk, but I couldn’t shake the idea that
King Daemon had died before he was alerted, even though he had been an
experienced vampire king.

I was a lone elemental, barely
trained, and I was not alone out here in the woods.

Up ahead I could see the house. I
knew that if I could just get there I’d be fine. But now my very breath, and
the slamming of my heart in my chest, added to the noise in my ears.

I no longer tried to be quiet. As
the shadow on my right drew closer I became convinced that it was in the form
of a human. At least it was not a hellhound, then. I didn’t like hellhounds.
Luckily, Sip had come to my rescue on more than one occasion when I was
attacked by them, but at some point my luck was bound to run out.

Dispensing with secrecy, I
sprinted for the house. The shadow behind me moved, but I didn’t wait to see if
it followed me.

My hand reached the doorknob and
I felt a little better. I pushed through the door and nearly tumbled into the
living room. Two pairs of eyes turned to me in surprise.

Sip got out of the chair quickly
and came over to wrap her arms around my waist. She might be small, but I could
feel the strength in her limbs as they offered me comfort. After hesitating for
only a second, Lisabelle followed her over. Instead of hugging me, which for
Lisabelle would have been weird, she placed both of her thin, long hands on my
shoulders and stared into my gray eyes.

“Look,” she said. “We will find
out what happened to your mother. We will be able to tell Ricky, if the telling
turns out to ease your mind and be a good idea for him. Someone will work on
the artifacts. If you want it can be both Uncle Risper - I mean Elam - and us,
but you have to listen to this. . . .” She sighed and trailed off. Through my
haze of anger at my friends’ not understanding, I could see that Lisabelle was
working to control some powerful emotion.

I just fought to breathe. My
friends stared at me.

“What happened?” Lisabelle
demanded.

I took a couple more great gulps
of air. “I thought something was out there.”

“Nonsense,” said Lisabelle.
“We’re in a safe place.” She glanced at Sip because it was Sip’s house, and she
should know what was going on.

“Yeah,” said Sip carefully,
staring out one of the windows into the field that I had just come from. “Maybe
I should just check anyway.”

“I’ll do it,” said Lisabelle,
starting for the door. A ghostly iron hand wrapped around the darkness mage’s
arm and held her fast. I glanced at Sip’s face. Her eyes were hard. Her cute
exterior masked an iron will.

“It’s my house,” she said. “You
might be the most prominent scary thing around, but sometimes quiet is scary
too.” Without waiting for an answer, she brushed past us and was out the door,
her tail the last thing to disappear. Lisabelle turned to stare at me.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded.

“Is she?”

I shrugged. “I imagine she knows
what she’s doing, but if you don’t like it maybe you should think about that
the next time you hare off by yourself to fight demons.”

“Don’t be silly,” Lisabelle
scoffed. “I’m fine.”

“Then so is Sip,” I said evenly.

“But what did it look like?”
Lisabelle asked. “Can she really fight something like that off?”

“I thought it looked human,” I
said, trying to remember. Professor Dacer had once given me a long lecture
about how the mind’s memory was a complicated mechanism, and often what you
thought you saw you had not really seen, or you missed something obvious or did
not understand. All his talk had done at the time was confuse me, but now,
thinking about it, I wondered if the long arms and crushed-looking head of the
shadow had been real, or a figment of my frightened imagination.

We waited in silence. Lisabelle
didn’t try to apologize any further for what had happened. In the end I knew
that my friend supported me, but I also knew that both her parents were alive
and she had grown up with them. She had never had to miss anyone. She had never
had to get used to a new dad or think about what it was like to have a
half-brother whose father hated you.

These things were all my own, and
no matter what my friends said about fighting the immediate threat - the demons
- I planned on finding out what had happened to my mother.

It was time.

I would just have to plan on
doing it alone if no one was ready to help me when I wanted help.

“When Sip comes back I need to
contact Professor Dacer,” I said. “I want to let him know I’m coming to the
coronation.”

We didn’t have to wait very long
for Sip. The door swung open again quite soon, and our friend appeared. She was
in human form again, with her spikey blond hair slightly disheveled. Lisabelle
quickly went over to her and picked a twig out of her hair.